Alaska’s vanishing ice threatens to destroy cultures – including our own

There’s a line in the 2018 Arctic Report Card that I keep coming back to.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
2018 Arctic Report Card noted a record low extent for
virtually the entire ice season in the Bering Sea.

Released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it notes with alarm the record low extent for virtually the entire ice season in the Bering Sea.

The line brings me back to a sunny midsummer morning in Teller, Alaska.

I’m standing with Mayor Blanche Obanoke-Garnie, just above Teller’s shoreline. I had traveled 4,000 miles north as a National Geographic explorer to listen and learn how Americans were responding to the dynamic and dangerous shifts along our coastlines as sea levels rise.

Read the story from The Guardian by Victoria Herrmann - “Alaska’s vanishing ice threatens to destroy cultures – including our own.”

Simple, innocent video tells a tragic story

While most of the lower 48 states are shivering their way into 2015, in much of Alaska the concern is persistent warmth.

Fourth graders at the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat school in Quinhagak recently caught the attention of some news outlets and climate scientists with a clever video bemoaning a warm and snowless December. The town of about 660 residents, mostly Yup’ik Eskimos, is a mile from the Bering Sea coast.

Watch the fourth graders video here: “Alaskan 4th graders made a clever video about their not-so-white Christmas, but it ended up being something much more powerful”